Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas

Im Auftrag des Instituts für Ost- und Südosteuropastudien Regensburg
herausgegeben von Martin Schulze Wessel und Dietmar Neutatz

Ausgabe: 62 (2014), 2, S. 296-297

Verfasst von: Scott M. Kenworthy

David B. Miller: Saint Sergius of Radonezh, His Trinity Monastery, and the Formation of the Russian Identity. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010. X, 348 S., 12 Abb., 3 Tab., 2 Ktn., Graph. ISBN: 978-0-87580-432-3.

David Miller’s monograph focuses on the origins and history of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery to the beginning of the seventeenth century. The first three chapters focus on the monastery’s founder, St. Sergius of Radonezh, both in life and in the establishment of his veneration as a saint in subsequent generations. The next four chapters are focused on the monastery, particularly its patrons and monks, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The early chapters are based primarily upon two “Lives” of St. Sergius and their various redactions and manuscript traditions, while the latter four chapters draw from an exhaustive database that Miller compiled from records of donations made to the monastery. Given the difference in sources and subject matter, the first part of the book is very different from the latter.

The first section of the book, on Sergius of Radonezh, reads rather like a Russian historian’s version of the ‘quest for the historical Jesus’ (indeed, the first chapter is entitled “The Historical Sergius”), in which the author a priori excludes the possibility that the ‘authentic’ historical record (namely, the earliest biography of St. Sergius) could contain any supernatural elements. He then goes to great efforts of textual analysis and reconstruction to argue that all such elements in the life of St. Sergius were “inventions” of later hagiographers. Miller starts by assuming that scholarship on medieval Western sainthood, according to which a person is only “made” a saint when posthumous miracles are attributed to him or her, fully applies to medieval Muscovy. From there he argues that, at his death, no one considered Sergius a saint. Based upon his textual reconstruction (driven by his a priori assumptions), Miller asserts that Epifanii the Wise, who was Sergius’s disciple and wrote the first biography around 1418, viewed Sergius as an ideal monk but not a “miracle worker”. From there, he argues that miracle stories, most notably Sergius’s vision of the Mother of God and his assurance that Dmitrii Donskoi will succeed in battle against the Mongols, are “fictions” “invented” by Sergius’s second biographer, Pakhomii the Serb, who wrote various editions in the 1440s to support the establishment of Sergius’s cult as a miracle-worker.

Miller’s argument is driven by problematic assumptions about how sainthood worked in the Eastern Church. To begin with, Orthodox Christians do not “worship” saints (a term he uses throughout the book), as the Seventh Ecumenical Council firmly established. Further, sainthood in the Christian East was not identical to the Christian West, yet Miller makes no comparisons with Byzantine models of sainthood (or, for that matter, of monasticism). The fact that Epifanii began collecting materials for Sergius’s biography soon after his death, and wrote his Life at all, already attest to the fact that Epifanii (and presumably others) regarded Sergius as a saint. Being an exemplary monk was sufficient to qualify one as a saint, as the Life of Antonii of the Kiev Caves reveals. It is also highly implausible that Pakhomii could have “invented” the story about Sergius’s vision of the Mother of God in the late 1430s, as Miller argues (pp. 52–58), and within a few short years (1446) the story and its iconographic tradition was so well established that it would be that very icon which Grand Prince Vasilii grabbed when pleading for his life (p. 72). Finally, Miller’s skepticism about the authenticity of Sergius’s role in the Kulikovo victory is not shared by most Russian specialists.

When he turns his attention to the history of the monastery in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Miller’s sources are much richer and his argument much less schematic.  He draws on some 4,000 cases of donations and prayer requests. Miller follows the intricate politics whereby the monastery becomes the central shrine for Moscow’s rulers, who regularly baptized their children at the monastery, made pilgrimages, and bestowed extravagant gifts. Examining other donors, the main focus is on Muscovite “commemorative culture”: the practice of making donations so that one’s name (and/or that of a relative) would be inscribed in the “Sinodik”, the book of names to be prayed for in perpetuity, a practice evidently on the rise precisely at this time.  Miller concludes that Trinity-Sergius was Muscovy’s most sacred shrine because it received far more donations than any other monastery and from a greater geographical scope. He also argues that such commemorations are the best way to examine popular religiosity of the era and that the evidence suggests such a religious culture was pervasive, without evident distinctions according to class – that all classes gave as they could, although larger gifts resulted in more prominent “liturgical time” in the monastery’s commemorations.  

Miller also examines the number and social profile of monks together with the administration of the monastery. By the mid-15th century, the monastery no longer adhered to the strict communal (cenobitic) rule established by Sergius, but rather wealthy monks retained control over their property during their lifetimes. From that time, monks from elite landowning families dominated the monastery’s administration and made up an increasing proportion of the brotherhood, who needed to make substantial donations to the monastery in order to join. This latter trend only changes in the late sixteenth century with Ivan IV’s oprichnina and subsequent economic decline, as the ‘entrance fee’ was lowered and the brotherhood diversified both socially and geographically.

One of the most interesting chapters focuses on the monastery’s relationship with female venerators. According to Miller’s data, a significant number of elite women had a substantial degree of control over property, and expressed their devotion by making donations to the monastery – often for prayers for themselves, their husbands, their children, and their ancestors. According to these records, widows who were making such bequests were also often tonsured as nuns. Monastic tonsure also figured frequently among those who requested to be buried at the monastery. In the sixteenth century there was a certain prestige (both socially and spiritually, as it were) in being buried at the monastery and in proximity to Muscovy’s greatest saint. In examining burial records, however, Miller finds that elite social status alone did not guarantee one a final resting place in the monastery; rather, this also depended upon a long-standing relationship to the monastery which included generous giving and frequently monastic tonsure late in life.

The two halves of this book are fundamentally different in argumentation and source base. The author’s reconstruction of St. Sergius’s life is speculative and debatable. But his treatment of the monastery’s subsequent history is a very important contribution. He demonstrates how the veneration of St. Sergius permeated all levels of Muscovite society and how the monastery had an economic and geographic reach that was second only to the state, rendering it unique as a religious center of national proportions. It is certainly an important contribution to the study of medieval Russia and its religious life.

Scott M. Kenworthy, Oxford, OH

Zitierweise: Scott M. Kenworthy über: David B. Miller: Saint Sergius of Radonezh, His Trinity Monastery, and the Formation of the Russian Identity. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010. X, 348 S., 12 Abb., 3 Tab., 2 Ktn., Graph. ISBN: 978-0-87580-432-3, http://www.dokumente.ios-regensburg.de/JGO/Rez/Kenworthy_Miller_Saint_Sergius_of_Radonezh.html (Datum des Seitenbesuchs)

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